LIVING THREADS / Performers(') Present / Yong Siew Toh Conservatory / Review

 

LIVING THREADS

Performers(‘) Present 2026

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory

Conservatory Concert Hall

Thursday (22 October 2026)

The opening concert of the triennial Performers(‘) Present conference / festival organised by Yong Siew Toh Conservatory was an extraordinary event. It was refreshingly different, and one which included Singapore premieres of two rather unusual instrumental concertos conducted by Lien Boon Hua.

The 80-minute concert without intermission opened with the Green Tea Concerto (2021) by Japanese composer Dai Fujikura (born 1977). This 19-minute single movement concerto was originally written for traverso (baroque flute) and a small ensemble of strings and harpsichord. Eric Lamb was the excellent soloist on modern flute, with a virtuoso part that took ideas from Debussy’s Syrinx and Prelude to the Afternoon of the Fawn. 

That was just the start point for a journey of fantasy which was inspired by Fujikura’s family experience of planting and harvesting green tea. At points, the ethereal instrumental colour relived those of Toru Takemitsu’s chamber works. While strings and harpsichord (played by Chiu Pin-Hsin) spun a web of busy activity, Lamb’s flute solo remained steadfast and unfazed, symbolic of the resilience of the tea shrubs all through to the close of this exquisitely beautiful work.

There was a short 6-minute interlude by Balinese gamelan exponent Wayan Rachman on gender wayang, a one man gamelan metallophone tuned to the Pelog scale. The intricate blend of melody and counterpoint wrought by just two mallets was totally intriguing. It was little wonder how its sound so entranced composers like Debussy at the 1889 Paris Universal Exposition, and spawned new directions of musical composition.

Orientalism might have been the inspiration for the four-movement Piano Concerto (1983-85) by American composer Lou Harrison (1917-2003). This featured a much larger ensemble of strings, two harps, three trombones and percussion with the zaniest of piano solos helmed by Albert Tiu. This work was written for and premiered by Keith Jarrett no less, a far cry from his solo jazz musings. The music is tonal and modal, with the ensemble tuned to some antique (Kirnberger II) system, which hovered between C major and G major.

The first two movements were extended sonata movements, the first sounding a lot like Chinese music with heterophony from the accompanying instruments. Tiu obliged with resolute octaves and lots of scurrying around the scalic notes. The piece de resistance was its second movement, titled Stampede. Riot (bringing to mind the recent events in France) was more like it, with repeated crashing forearm clusters and further flourishes from octave-long cluster felt-lined board. It was for most part a pitched battle between piano and Christian Borres on drums while others fell silent.

The third movement seemed almost apologetic, its hymn-like countenance was like a prayer, easily the most beautiful moments of the concerto. The finale was short-winded, with piano accompanied by tinkling percussion for a happy and joyous (no longer riotous) close. The audience erupted with loud enthusiasm for all the performers, a sign that new music that is accessible and intelligible will always be welcomed.

SSO NATIONAL DAY CONCERT 2026 / FROM MY LIFE / Singapore Symphony Orchestra & Lynnette Seah & Friends / Review

 

NATIONAL DAY CONCERT 2026

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Saturday (15 August 2026)

FROM MY LIFE

Lynnette Seah (Violin) & Friends

Esplanade Recital Studio

Wednesday (19 August 2026)

This review was published by The Straits Times on 20 August 2026 with the title "Home-grown talent command stage at SSO National Day Concert & Lynnette Seah solo".

Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s annual National Day Concert has over the years become a true showcase of Singaporean composing talent. Led by Lien Boon Hua, its latest edition included five world premieres in an exceptionally well-balanced programme of original music

Low Peng Guan’s A Singapore Suite opened the show, a short overture taking listeners on a musical tour of Gardens By The Bay, Chinatown, Little India and Singapore River, skillfully blending orchestral colour and imagery with ethnic musical styles.

Sulwyn Lok’s Three Dancers, a double concerto for guitar and zhongruan, united Kevin Loh and Jonathan Ngeow from different musical traditions in a happy marriage of plucked strings. Both soloists traded solo and accompaniment roles in a virtuosic work that contrasted meditative movements with throes of ecstasy.

Wong Cheow Cai’s The Plains: Echoes, celebrating the Padang’s legacy, struck more serious notes with stirring string-writing, punctuated by percussion and Pan Yun’s plaintive oboe solo. Eruption of tense music, depicting cruel years of Japanese Occupation, eventually gave way to a calm but guarded close, with Singapore’s realisation of independence.

Kelly Tang’s Three Symphonic Movements retold different periods of Singapore history with projected images from the National Archives. A busy freeport established by Stamford Raffles was edgily described in Colony, while an idyllic Legend spun apocryphal stories of Sang Nila Utama and the founding of Temasek. Finally, a vibrant Metropolis closed the suite on an optimistic high.

Cultural Medallion recipient Edwin Thumboo’s poem Renovation was the inspiration for Germaine Goh’s Five Beginnings, its verses sung by singer-songwriter Linying with a vocoder, which augmented lines with added harmonies. This beautifully euphonious mini cantata deserves many listens.

The evening closed with The Republic, melodious finale from Singapore – Symphonic Suite by Tsao Chieh (1953-1996), late composer, engineer, defence scientist and local Internet pioneer. His clever polyphonic working of Xiao Bai Chuan, Rasa Sayang and the appearance of Majulah Singapura at its close still raises goosebumps like its 1986 Singapore Arts Festival premiere.

A performance of the National Anthem.

Photographic evidence I was at the concert.

Speaking of national treasures, Cultural Medallion recipient Lynnette Seah gave her first solo concert since retiring as SSO co-leader seven years ago. In a very demanding programme of classical and jazz works, she showed the chops that defined her illustrious career of four decades.

In Cesar Franck’s Violin Sonata in A major, a sweet but resolute tone held sway, alternating lyricism with passion through its four movements. The finale’s canon has one of classical music’s best melodies, milked for all its worth with pianist Albert Tiu who had the more technically difficult part.

They were joined by SSO principal horn Austin Larson for a second performance of Johannes Brahms’ Horn Trio in E flat major (Op.40) heard in Singapore within eleven days. Larson reprised his virtuoso role with absolute aplomb, and the very busy threesome showed what give-and-take in chamber music was about.

The other classical works, also accompanied by Tiu, included Joachim Raff’s heartrending Cavatina and the premiere of young local composer Ong Lin Wei’s With Love, a melodious outpouring with a gospel vibe about it.

Jazz legend Jeremy Monteiro took over the keyboard for the rest of the show. Jazz singer Alemay Fernandez alternated melodies with Seah in Germaine Goh’s arrangement of Irish tune Londonderry Air (Danny Boy). SSO principal cellist Ng Pei-Sian and drummer Hong Chanutr Techatananan made a foursome for Monteiro’s romantic Soul Mates and virile train piece From Paris to Segré.

That the Who’s Who of Singapore’s classical and jazz spheres all joined hands in tribute to Lynnette Seah speaks volumes of their great esteem for her.

MUSICAL VOYAGE II / WHERE WORLDS CONVERGE: A NIGHT AT THE CROSSROADS / Singapore National Youth Chinese Orchestra / National University of Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

 

MUSICAL VOYAGE II 

Singapore National Youth 

Chinese Orchestra 

Singapore Conference Hall 

Saturday (22 March 2025)

WHERE WORLDS CONVERGE: 

A NIGHT AT THE CROSSROADS 

National University of Singapore 

Symphony Orchestra 

Conservatory Concert Hall 

Sunday (23 March 2025) 

This review was published in The Straits Times on 25 March 2025 with the review "Young orchestras SNYCO and NUSSO prove mettle in weekend concerts".

Just a fortnight after the Singapore National Youth Orchestra’s sterling performance under Singapore Symphony music director Hans Graf comes another weekend with two youth orchestras making their mark on the music scene. 

The Singapore National Youth Chinese Orchestra (SNYCO) led by Lien Boon Hua mastered a demanding programme which included works by three young Singaporean composers. First was the world premiere of Chok Kerong’s Bird’s-Eye View. Better known as a jazz pianist and arranger, Chok’s single-movement symphonic poem displayed range by resourceful use of tonal colours and unusual harmonies. Depicting the buoyancy of flight, the music soared with unfettered wings. 

Quite different yet engaging was Sulwyn Lok’s With a Little Bit of Love and Imagination, with excerpts that possessed the easy accessibility of pop-inspired movie music. In Phang Kok Jun’s Storytellers on Ann Siang Road, a musical duel ensued between erhus played by brothers Zeng Canran and Zeng Haoran, accompanied by just six players. By reflecting and merging disparate cultures of Chinese and Malay music, this was Nanyang music at its most intimate. 

This was contrasted by the well-established Nanyang classic that is Law Wai Lun’s Prince Sang Nila Utama and Singa. This saga on the founding of early Singapore was a musical voyage skillfully using gamelan scales to be found in Indonesian music. 

Photo: Singapore Chinese Orchestra

There were two works inspired by the culture and scenery of Tibet. Wen Zhanli’s The Encounter and the Forgotten Valley, a single-movement tone poem, relived the pomp of Tibet’s religious processions and relished in exuberant dances, closing with an impressive suona solo and implausibly long-held final note. 

Kuan Nai-chung’s four-movement symphony A Trip to Lhasa was the perfect picture-postcard travelogue, distinguished by playing of sensitivity and relentless vigour. There can be no more vivid music than its final two movements, depicting the blood-curdling ritual of a Celestial Burial and a raucous dance for Vanquishing Demons. 

Part of the National University of Singapore Arts Festival, the NUS Symphony Orchestra (NUSSO) led by Thai conductor Pamornpan Komolpamorn, resident conductor of the Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra, showcased its prowess and potential in two contrasted works. 

Photo: Asher Tan

The first was the world premiere of Singapore Symphony Orchestra principal flautist Jin Ta’s Life of a Rice. This pleasing 15-minute tone poem for solo flute and orchestra with projected animations depicted the journey of a rice grain from padi field to dinner table through a series of variations. The pentatonic melodies reflected its Chinese inspiration while extended cadenzas stamped Jin’s virtuoso credentials. 

Which young orchestra does not aspire to playing a symphony by Gustav Mahler? NUSSO’s first ever performance of the Austrian composer’s First Symphony was a dream come true, a reading that lacked nothing in guts and determination. 

Although it had a shaky opening in the depiction of dawn with brass yet to fully warm up, the orchestra soon gained confidence and composure, and never looked back. There was much vigour in the second movement’s Landler dance, the main impetus being its striding pace. 

The third movement’s funeral march was a droll canon on the Frere Jacques theme, led by solo double bass but with Klezmer elements coming on full flow, rusticity was turned on its head. Most impressive, however, was the finale’s primal scream, literally the “cry of a wounded heart” which showed that the musicians knew exactly what this music was about. 

The symphony’s titanic journey from death to life, with the entire French horn section up on its feet for a grandstanding end, raised the goosebumps and provided moments to remember and cherish.

A reunion of the Kent Ridge
Fine Music and Steak Appreciation Club
(No vegetarians accepted).

KEILA PLAYS BARBER / re:Sound / Review

 

KEILA PLAYS BARBER 

re:Sound 

Victoria Concert Hall 

Wednesday (15 January 2025)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 18 January 2025 with the title "Young American-Japanese violinist Keila Wakao scores artistic triumph".

The enduring popularity of music by 20th century American composer Samuel Barber (1910-1981) rests on two works, and both were performed in re:Sound’s first concert of the year. His Adagio for Strings, synonymous with grief and mourning, is an expanded orchestration of the central slow movement from the String Quartet Op.11. 

Its overall mood of profound sadness is often milked for all its worth, diminishing its impact by cheapening it. However, the strings of re:Sound, led by concertmaster Yang Shuxiang, took a different view. Adagio is not a matter of being slow, but possessing broadness in tempo. That was how the music emanated mysteriously from the ether, took on a slow burn all through to an impassioned climax but without resorting to hysteria. 

The sound was lush without being cloying, and the elegy was complete. Similar processes also dominated Felix Mendelssohn’s String Symphony No.7 in D minor, composed when he was just thirteen. The performance of its four movements did not so much radiate youthful exuberance, but the nous of a wizened veteran who knew his Mozart and Handel well. 

The opening movement’s Sturm und Drang (storm and stress) was well handled, its urgency contrasted with the slow movement’s finely-weaved romancing and third movement’s somewhat rough-hewn minuet. All stops were pulled for the finale’s virtuoso show of fast and light playing, a typically Mendelssohnian trait, with the obligatory lesson of fugal counterpoint. 

Back to Barber, his Violin Concerto (1939) received a radiant yet mature performance from 18-year-old American-Japanese violinist Keila Wakao, winner of the Yehudi Menuhin Violin Competition (Junior Division) in 2021, an accolade previously also bestowed on Chloe Chua. The concerto’s unusual schema of two slow movements followed by a brief but fiery fast finale to close was controversial at its time. 

The original dedicatee balked at the “simplicity” of the first two movements but was defeated by the finale’s unbridled technical demands. All these played into the hands of Wakao, who was the very definition of virtuosity itself. Matching the might of the orchestra conducted by Lien Boon Hua, her performance was an unmitigated artistic triumph. 

Beauty of tone and purity of intonation were evident from the outset, as she eased into the opening movement’s lyrical sweet spots, which were plenty. The orchestra could have overwhelmed her in the plethoric climaxes, but she stood tall and unflinching. 

The central movement’s long orchestral introduction included a lovely solo from oboist Simon Lee (echoes of the slow movement from Johannes Brahms’ violin concerto) with further contributions from clarinettist Ralph Lim’s clarinet and Alan Kartik’s French horn. Then it was Wakao’s cue to turn on the charm, the music gently winding its way to powerful high points where she shone again. 

The fearsome Presto in moto perpetuo finale held no terrors as both soloist and orchestra raced off to a breathlessly exciting finish. Wakao’s solo encore, the Dolce opening movement from Georg Philipp Telemann’s Fantasia No.7, was just sublime.

Another look at this review as published in The Straits Times:

https://www.straitstimes.com/life/travel/concert-review-artistic-triumph-of-young-american-japanese-violinist-keila-wakao